


Had we but world enough, and time

by Philosopher_King



Series: The Spy Who Came In from the Cold [3]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Body Image, Bottom Elim Garak, Enabran Tain's A+ Parenting, Erotic Poetry, Established Relationship, Holosuite Dates (Star Trek), Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Internalized Fatphobia, Love Confessions, M/M, POV Elim Garak, Poetry, Post-Episode: s04e26 Broken Link, Prison, References to attempted genocide, Semi-Public Sex, Top Julian Bashir, Xenophilia, which are not at all heartwarming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-13 05:53:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28898454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philosopher_King/pseuds/Philosopher_King
Summary: After attempting to destroy the Founders' homeworld in "Broken Link," Garak has been sentenced to six months in a holding cell on Deep Space 9. Julian continues visiting for their weekly lunch, and they are allowed a picnic in a holosuite during the hour that Garak is allotted for daily exercise. They get some (unauthorized) exercise, and Julian says something he's been meaning to say.
Relationships: Elim Garak & Odo, Julian Bashir/Elim Garak
Series: The Spy Who Came In from the Cold [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2163039
Comments: 56
Kudos: 96
Collections: Star Trek: Just in Time Fest





	Had we but world enough, and time

**Author's Note:**

> I saw [this post](https://startrekjustintime.tumblr.com/post/639566595312828417/do-time) on Tumblr from the Just in Time Fest blog:  
> " 'do time' -- _slang_ to serve a prison sentence  
> "Just a reminder that works for Star Trek: Just in Time Fest don’t have to be about time travel! Got a good prison fic? We’d love if you submitted it!"
> 
> Then my brain fell into a hole and here we are.
> 
> Credits for some of the ideas in this fic can be found at the end.

Since being exiled to Terok Nor, Garak found that he had nothing but time. That was more true than ever now that he had been sentenced to six months in a holding cell on this State-forsaken station.

Oh, of course he was granted ways to pass the time. The Federation was nothing if not _humane_ —a word in Standard derived from the name of their founding species (and they reproached the Cardassians for their government’s self-serving propaganda!). Garak was permitted reading material on a stripped-down PADD that lacked the capability to connect to a communications network; he was even permitted to do some minor tailoring work—just simple repairs; no elaborate designs that would have required access to more sophisticated imaging equipment—and save the income for when he was released. He would have lost a fair amount of business in the meantime, after all… though his eating expenses were also covered by his generous hosts, and Starfleet was graciously waiving the rent for his shop and quarters while he was denied access to them.

Garak gave his skills some moderate exercise by altering the PADD to pick up communications from Station Ops and Security and deleting the records before Odo or one of his deputies could inspect its contents. Unfortunately, he was not allowed access to his own cutting and sewing equipment, no matter how much he fussed about a humble craftsman’s attachment to the tools of his trade; quite rightly, Odo would only trust him with the most basic replicated versions. Ah, well; it would only have been an intellectual exercise to use his modified tools to find the wiring in the walls and deactivate the force field keeping him in. There was nowhere he could go if he ‘escaped,’ other than to crawl around in the service tubes until he was discovered—or, more likely, revealed himself, given his low tolerance for dark confined spaces—and returned to his cell, no doubt with an extended sentence.

Odo also insisted that Garak be monitored by a security officer whenever he was doing the minor garment repairs he was permitted. “Surely you don’t think I can accomplish anything nefarious with the tools that you yourself replicated for me?” Garak had protested the first time Odo presented him with the option.

“An electronic fabric cutter is still a blade. The Federation takes care to ensure that its prisoners cannot do any harm to themselves.”

“That’s a general policy of theirs, is it?” Garak asked in a tone of mild curiosity.

“Apparently,” was all Odo said.

“How considerate of them.”

Odo’s rather uninformative response did not rule out that Doctor Bashir had told him Garak presented a particular risk in that regard. Less of one, certainly, since the implant had been permanently deactivated… but he might still have been tempted to distract himself from the limited dimensions within which he was confined. It was very fortunate that—in characteristically humane Federation fashion—the front wall of his cell was a transparent force field through which he could freely converse with Odo, his deputies, or even the drunks and petty criminals who cycled through the other holding cells (not that they had anything of interest to say to him). This feature permitted him to entertain the illusion that it was open to the room outside and he could walk out at any time, but was simply too engrossed in his reading or tailoring work.

His claustrophobia was also somewhat alleviated by another humane Federation policy allotting long-term prisoners an hour of exercise every day. It would have been cruelly humiliating to escort him around the Promenade for an hour, so instead one of Quark’s holosuites was reserved for his use every morning at 1100 hours. This, too, required an escort, which Odo undertook himself whenever possible—he knew that the time would not be enjoyable for anyone involved if he delegated one of his Bajoran deputies, and he allowed that he didn’t mind using these little strolls as a replacement for their breakfasts together (in which Odo would now be able to participate more fully, Garak didn’t bother to remark).

“Well, Garak, where would you like to take a walk?” Odo had asked in his usual gruff manner the first time they entered the holosuite for this purpose.

“Oh, it doesn’t matter to me, as long as it’s somewhere warm.”

“Not on Cardassia Prime?”

“Constable, I would be most disappointed in you if you hadn’t noticed that I have never used a holoprogram set on Cardassia in all the years that I have been on this station.”

“I had noticed… but you use the holosuites so infrequently that it would be difficult to attribute a reason or extrapolate to future behavior.”

“Well, I’ve done the extrapolating for you; I’ll leave the attribution of reasons to your imagination.”

“Hmm. Warm and dry, or warm and humid?”

“I believe dry would be more pleasant for you.”

After another considering hum Odo said, “Computer, run program Hedrikspool Nature Preserve, Location One. Season: summer; time: one hour before sunset.”

‘Location One’ turned out to be a dirt path through scrubby vegetation on a rise of hills just above a narrow strip of beach. The sun was setting over the ocean, darkening its greenish hue to a deeper blue-gray. It wasn’t quite as warm as Garak would have liked, but it was certainly better than the ambient temperature of the station. The air smelled better, too—the smells of moisture, salt, pungent invigorating plant terpenes, and even decaying fish were fresh, rich, _alive_ in a way the air of the station never was. Deep Space 9 smelled of recycled air and artificial cleanness thinly layered atop the filth of humanoid bodies packed in too close… but at least it was better than the fearful, desperate, industrial stink of Terok Nor.

“Ah, Constable, how did you know I love the seashore?” he asked, turning to Odo with an exaggerated smile.

Odo shrugged. “Many humanoids seem to find the presence of water soothing.”

“Observant as always.”

They started along the path, and Garak allowed his senses to register the slight movements of animal life in the brush on either side and the overhead flight of seabirds even as he turned in Odo’s direction to ask, “So, tell me, how have you been adjusting to humanoid life? Aside from the itchiness of the clothing.”

“It’s been… very strange. The taste of food is interesting, but the process of chewing, swallowing, and digesting it is…” He shuddered. “I still struggle with the idea of taking something foreign inside oneself that way, absorbing it into one’s body.”

Garak considered remarking on the other humanoid activities to which that description might apply, but decided Odo was not ready for such innuendos. “Your people don’t do anything similar?”

“We grow, but only as we grow in knowledge. We don’t incorporate external matter.”

“Except in the Great Link.”

“That’s not… it’s really not at all the same. Others of our kind are not foreign, not external. We… merge; no one absorbs or is absorbed.”

“But you grow in knowledge when you are in the Link.”

“Yes, but… it is shared, not _taken_. When you eat another organism, the amount of matter in the universe remains the same; what was once its matter becomes yours, and no longer belongs to its previous bearer. But when one individual shares knowledge with another, the amount of knowledge in the universe increases. Both retain it equally.”

“I see. Then… how are infants of your kind produced? They must be… extracted from the Great Link, somehow, but from whose matter? And how do they emerge lacking all the knowledge shared in the Link?”

Odo glared at him suspiciously. “Still the interrogator, even when _you’re_ the one being detained?” Garak took that to mean that Changeling reproduction was a jealously guarded secret of the Dominion—perhaps _so_ jealously guarded that they had not seen fit to share it with Odo when he was being judged by the Link.

“I didn’t mean to interrogate you; I am simply curious.”

“Remarkably curious about a species that you tried to annihilate four days ago.”

Garak looked seriously into Odo’s eyes, projecting earnestness. “I cannot express how remorseful I am for my actions. The Founder made a threat against Cardassia and I reacted from blind panic.”

Odo snorted. “Panic? You? Try again, Garak.”

Alas, if only Odo’s skepticism were warranted! But it was all to the good if he thought Garak too self-possessed to be capable of panic. The only thing more useful than being overestimated was being underestimated. “You’re right, it wasn’t panic; it was rage.”

“I still don’t buy it. I think you heard her threat and you made a calculation, and I don’t think you regret anything but that you didn’t succeed.”

He was almost right. There had been panic, and rage, but they were not the reason he had tried to destroy the Founders’ homeworld; they were the reason he had rushed, become sloppy, and missed that one security camera that allowed Worf to discover him. But did he regret not succeeding? He didn’t mind being alive to smell the holographic Bajoran ocean.

“You can believe me or not. But I do hope you know that I still regard you with nothing but the utmost respect.”

Odo stopped and just looked at him for a few seconds before he nodded and resumed walking. “I do believe that, and I don’t take it personally. In fact, I’m not even sure I blame you.”

Curiously, Garak wasn’t surprised to hear that. If Odo _had_ blamed him for trying to wipe out his whole species, he surely wouldn’t have been so friendly and relaxed when being fitted for his new uniform, and wouldn’t be taking this companionable stroll with him now along this artificial seashore.

But it would be presumptuous and ungrateful not to feign surprise. “How can you not blame me?” he asked, widening his eyes theatrically.

“I learned much about my people in the Great Link. I was shown glimpses of the centuries—the millennia of experience that have led my people to fear solids… but I was also shown glimpses of the protective measures they have taken in response. They have laid waste to whole worlds that they felt were a threat to them—that they could not control.”

“That is what she said they would do to Cardassia. I believed her.”

“My people do not make idle threats.”

“Yes, I got that distinct impression.”

“That does _not_ mean I think you were right—either of you,” Odo added with stern vehemence. “The impulse to eliminate all threats can lead to nothing but endless suspicion, destruction, and death.”

“ _Justice_ may demand that one wait until the threat is actualized to exact the retribution—but justice is cold comfort for those who suffered the initial harm.”

“Justice demands _proportion_. It seeks a restoration of balance, not the total destruction of any offender, however slight the offense.”

Garak drew back and looked at him seriously. “She was wrong about you,” he said, recalling what Odo had told him at one of their breakfasts about his first encounter with the Founders. “It is justice that you seek, not mere order.”

Odo returned his intent gaze and Garak thought he looked oddly—moved. “It may have begun as a quest for order,” he said thoughtfully, his voice low. “Perhaps that is in the nature of my people. But I learned from you humanoids to be… discerning about the _kind_ of order I pursue. To seek peace and accommodation among the various conflicting interests in a society—or a Quadrant, or a galaxy—rather than complete control, or the eradication of any source of challenge or conflict. It may be harder to achieve in the short term, but it is the only kind of order than can endure.”

“Ah, Constable, has the Federation so quickly turned you into an idealist?” Garak lamented with a wry smile.

Odo hmphed indignantly at the suggestion. “On the contrary, they have only confirmed me in the conclusion I reached while working for _your_ people: that justice is the highest form of pragmatism.”

“What a poignant aphorism!” Garak exclaimed with a delighted laugh. “It seems you have learned to shape-shift into a philosopher!”

Odo just hmphed again and rolled his expressive eyes.

The hour spent in this simulacrum of the outdoors barely felt like an hour—in stark contrast to the hours spent within the gray walls of the holding cell, which crept by so slowly that every glance at a chronometer surprised him with how little time had passed. Most days it was the only thing he had to look forward to, no matter how interesting the book he was reading or the security files he accessed through a PADD that shouldn’t have been capable of it.

The fourth day of his imprisonment, unexpectedly, he returned from his holosuite outing with Odo to find Doctor Bashir waiting in the area outside the holding cells, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet with his hands clasped behind him, one of them clutching what looked like a brown paper bag.

“Doctor! What a pleasant surprise,” he said with a broad smile that gave no hint of his apprehension.

“It’s our day to have lunch,” the Doctor said almost… plaintively?

“So it is.” He hadn’t thought their arrangement would persist under the present circumstances—and after the events that had led to them. “I do hope you haven’t been waiting long.”

“Only a few minutes. My lunch break just started.”

“Well, I suppose I might as well join you.”

Odo rolled his eyes slightly at the euphemistic locution and extended an arm to usher Garak back into his cell, then entered a code to raise the force field behind him and departed.

Garak took a seat in the chair at the round metal table that, along with his bed, a shelf for a few changes of clothes, and the adjoining lavatory, were the only furnishings in his cell. “What’s that you’ve brought with you?” he asked, nodding toward the bag that Bashir now held at his side.

“Oh, I just packed a sandwich,” he said, and drew out that lamentably ubiquitous food item: handheld, portable, meant to be prepared and eaten quickly—so characteristically Human.

“Well, that won’t do. You’ll have to ask the Constable if you can bring in a table so that you can eat something more substantial next time.”

“Perhaps I will.” In the meantime, he positioned the sole metal chair in the vestibule to the holding cells so that it was directly in front of Garak’s cell and seated himself in it. “I trust they’re planning to feed you lunch as well?”

“Yes, one of Odo’s deputies will bring it momentarily.”

Perhaps just to give himself something to do with his restless hands, Bashir took a thermos out of his paper bag and took a sip from it. Tarkalean tea, no doubt, extra sweet.

“How are you doing?” he asked awkwardly.

“Oh, I am quite well. I’ve been given a six-month vacation, all expenses paid by Starfleet and the Bajoran Militia.”

Bashir gave him a wan smile. “That’s one way to look at it.”

“Ah!” Garak smiled with a show of gratitude as he saw one of Odo’s beige-uniformed Bajoran deputies enter the vestibule behind Bashir with a covered tray. Unsmiling, the man punched in another code to deactivate the force field and set it down on the table in front of Garak, barely glancing at him.

“Thank you, Mister…?”

The man looked up, surprised and mildly annoyed. “Pinar,” he said grudgingly. “Deputy Pinar.”

“Deputy Pinar,” Garak acknowledged with a nod and a warm smile. It might be useful to try to establish a rapport with some of Odo’s deputies and the Starfleet Security personnel; at the very least, it would mean that he wasn’t served a helping of cold hostility along with his meals. Pinar’s puzzled annoyance was already an improvement.

After the deputy had left, Garak uncovered his meal. Some Bajoran preparation of fish, which must have been found to be compatible with Cardassian digestion, and red leaf tea—Odo knew he favored it.

“Not too unpalatable, I hope?” Bashir remarked lightly.

“Not at all unpalatable, though perhaps a bit dull. Not unlike the volume of G’trok’s poetry we were supposed to have read for last week’s lunch.” Which had, of course, been preempted by other events.

“ _Dull?_ I don’t think I’ve ever heard Klingon poetry described as _dull_.”

"You must admit it gets a bit… repetitious. Battle, honor, blood, Kahless…”

“This from the man who thinks the _repetitive epic_ is the highest form not only of Cardassian art, but of art in general.”

“There’s a difference between _deliberate_ repetition as variation on a theme and repetition for want of ideas.”

“How do you know that G’trok’s repetition _isn’t_ deliberate variation on a theme?”

Garak gave him a skeptical look. “Because, Doctor, I know Klingons.”

“Really, Garak? I thought you were more open-minded than that. What was it you said—‘an open mind is the essence of intellect’?”

“Having a mind open to new experience does not preclude drawing conclusions from a surfeit of _past_ experience and bringing them to bear on the new. In fact, that’s the only way we can make sense of new experiences.”

“But what’s the point of having new experiences if you’ve already decided what you’re going to think about them?” Evidently the question was rhetorical, because he didn’t wait for an answer before he went on: “It seems to me there’s a cyclical pattern to the repetition of themes in _The Warrior’s Way_ …”

Were it not for the meters of distance and the invisible force field between them, it could have been any of their lunchtime literary debates over the past four years. Garak could almost pretend that the most important things they had to say to each other were about the thematic richness of Klingon poetry and that he wasn’t waiting tensely for Bashir to say something about the reason he was in this cell.

The spell was finally broken when one of Bashir’s devices beeped at him to indicate that he had five minutes before he had to be back to work in the infirmary. “I’m afraid we’ll have to continue this next week—though you might have more to say about what I’ve brought you to read for next week.” He pulled a datarod out of his pocket and said, “I’ll leave it with Odo to give to you—after he inspects it for illicit access codes, of course. It’s another classic of Human literature: the poetry of John Donne. He was a contemporary of Shakespeare”—Bashir smirked at Garak’s exaggerated grimace—“and the first of the so-called ‘metaphysical poets.’ It will all make much more sense to you since I made you read the Hebrew and Christian Bible.”

“A very strange, unevenly written hodgepodge of a work.”

“Yes, well, it _was_ written by several authors, over several centuries. And it is crucial to understanding virtually all European literature after about the tenth century, and indeed the majority of Human literature from the European Imperialist Period…”

“So you’ve said,” Garak said gently, stemming what threatened to become a flood of babbling.

“Right.” Bashir stood up, but after turning as if to go, he turned back and cleared his throat, looking like he wanted to say something but was hesitating.

Garak preempted him. “If you’re planning to express any of your typically outrageous literary views and you don’t want to share them all with the good Constable and Starfleet Security, you might consider asking whether they would permit you to escort me on my daily constitutional in the holosuite next week at 1100 hours.”

“Oh!” Bashir looked grateful for the suggestion. “I’d have to rearrange my work schedule…”

“You might also ask the Constable whether my constitutional could be rescheduled to coincide with your lunch hour. Perhaps we could make a picnic of it.”

“Yes, that… that would be lovely.” His smile was a little melancholy, a little anxious, but still managed to illuminate the dreary gray holding cells like dawn over the Mekar Wilderness.

Two days later, Odo remarked with his usual gruff suspicion, “Doctor Bashir has requested that he be allowed to accompany you to the holosuite next week, as your sole security escort. And he wants to bring lunch.”

Garak put on his best innocent, unassuming expression. “I trust you don’t suspect the station’s Chief Medical Officer of trying to break me out of confinement, or smuggle contraband to me.”

“Not exactly, no. But I _do_ suspect that he wants to communicate with you without surveillance.”

“Are Federation detainees not permitted confidential communication with their physician?”

Odo’s head tilted further and his skeptical glare darkened. “Are you saying Doctor Bashir wants to meet with you in his capacity as your physician? I should think he would summon you to the infirmary if that was his intention.”

“Very well, then: does the Federation not permit its detainees unsurveilled communication with their _friends?”_

“It does,” Odo said grudgingly.

“Then what is the problem?” Garak asked, cranking up the innocent concern.

Odo’s “hmph” was eloquently expressive, but he was discreet enough not to voice his suspicions where Starfleet Security also had access to the recordings.

The following week, Doctor Bashir showed up at 1200 hours precisely with a squarish bag on a long carrying strap over his shoulder and a hopeful smile on his face. Odo squinted at him meaningfully and said “You know the rules” before he entered the code to deactivate the force field.

It was just a short walk across the Promenade from the holding cells to Quark’s, and Garak seldom attracted more than a few curious stares as he traversed it with Odo or one of his security staff. There were even fewer stares for him and Doctor Bashir—probably because Bashir walked beside him as a friend, not half a pace behind him as a watchful escort—until they reached the spiral staircase up to the second level. That attracted Quark’s own attention; he raised his eye-ridges and smirked when he noticed them, then elbowed Rom and pointed. Rom looked nonplussed until Quark muttered something to him, then his mouth fell open and slowly widened into a grin. Bashir didn’t seem to notice any of that little drama; Garak would have to work on training his attentiveness.

They reached the door to the holosuite reserved for Garak’s daily exercise and Bashir pulled another datarod out of his pocket and slid it into the slot beside the door. “Computer, run program,” he said, and opened the door for them to walk through.

They stood beside a wide thoroughfare of gray stone that ran between hills covered with dusty-gold dry grass and sprinkled with hardy-looking green bushes and a few dark, dense-leafed trees. On the other side of the road, Garak could see rows of golden hills sloping down and away toward blue water, with stands of dark green trees nestled in their valleys. The air was warm and dry, stirred by a slight breeze, and the sky was a deep blue streaked with silver clouds.

“This is one of Earth’s old roads for automobiles, but it’s been turned into a path for walkers,” Bashir explained. “Ordinarily it would be crowded with people… but the advantage of a holoprogram is that you can edit them all out.”

“Where on Earth are we, precisely?”

“Not far from Starfleet Academy in San Francisco.”

“Really? I’d always heard San Francisco was cold, damp, and dreary.”

Bashir grinned. “It is, but if you go thirty or forty kilometers south, it’s much warmer… and I also took the liberty of raising the temperature and dimming the sunlight in this program.”

Garak gave him a small smile of genuine gratitude. “Another gift from your Academy friend Felix?”

“Yes—but it’s just a favorite location of ours; no characters or elaborate narratives. Come on,” he said, and started walking up the nearest slope away from the road.

A few minutes of gentle climbing and they reached the crest of the hill. On the other side the hills, more thickly carpeted with green trees and brush, fell sharply down to a flatland densely populated with buildings, beyond which was another stripe of blue water with another rise of golden hills on the far side.

“Turn around,” said Bashir, and Garak did, to see a wider stretch of the water he had glimpsed before, disappearing under a haze of gray mist. “This is one of the few spots where you can see San Francisco Bay to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west… but only on a clear day; half the time the ocean is covered in fog.”

“And of course your friend Felix immortalized such a day.”

“Of course,” he said, with a smile brighter than the thoughtfully dimmed sunlight. Abruptly, he dropped the bag from his shoulder, put both palms to Garak’s chest, and slid them up to rest on his cheeks, fingers gently brushing the lower curves of his eye-ridges. “God, I’ve missed you,” he breathed, and leaned in to kiss him urgently and deeply. Garak froze at his first touch, but returned the kiss—a Human habit to which he had grown happily accustomed.

“Doctor,” he said, cautioning, when Bashir pulled away, and at his reproving glare corrected, “Julian. I’m not sure this is the place or the time.”

“What else do we have? You can’t very well request a conjugal visit.” Garak had never heard that expression in Federation Standard, but the meaning was immediately clear.

“Are we really going to… conjugate… in Quark’s holosuite?”

“Everybody else does it.”

Garak shuddered. “Which is precisely the reason not to. Can you imagine what it would look like under a blacklight…?”

“I brought a picnic blanket.” Bashir— _Julian_ —unzipped the bag he had brought and pulled out a soft fleece blanket in the ‘plaid’ pattern of which humans were inexplicably fond: dark blue-green with intersecting stripes of yellow, red, and black.

“On a picnic blanket, in the holographic grass. Really.”

“Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“I do not _have_ a sense of adventure. I thought that should have become clear by now. What you regard as ‘adventure’ has always been, for me, either duty or grim necessity.”

“Accept the constraints of necessity, then.”

“‘Necessity’? After three weeks of abstinence? I believe that’s an exaggeration, even with _your_ prodigious appetite.”

“After _six months_ it will become a necessity for both of us. You might as well get used to the only option we have.”

“Ah, what I have been reduced to…”

“ _Elim_ ,” Julian nearly whined in frustration. He put his hands on Garak’s shoulders, then ran them up his shoulder ridges. “I know we want the same thing,” he said beside Garak’s ear. “I can _see_ it.” He mouthed along the ridge running down his neck to his shoulder, already darkened from the Doctor’s closeness and edging toward blue where his lips touched it. With a hiss, Garak closed his eyes and, not quite voluntarily, tilted his head to grant Julian easier access.

“ _Had we but world enough, and time_ ,” Julian murmured against his neck,  
_“This coyness, Lady, were no crime.  
We would sit down and think which way  
To walk and pass our long love’s day…”_

It was fortunate that Garak had turned off his Universal Translator for the purpose of discussing poetry written in English, the ancestor of Federation Standard, because he could hear the rhyme and the meter and knew that Julian was quoting poetry—though not the poetry of John Donne.

“What is that you’re reciting?” he asked, a little breathlessly.

“One of the later ‘metaphysical poets’—Andrew Marvell. ‘To His Coy Mistress’ is the most famous of their _carpe diem_ poems.”

“ _Carpe diem_ —‘seize the day.’” Julian had taught him that phrase in Latin, a long-dead Human language whose remnants still survived in some Standard idioms.

“Yes. ‘Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we shall die.’”

“What a very Klingon sentiment.”

“We Humans do have some things in common with them.”

“We Cardassians do not.”

“No? And what about all your exhortations to stop rushing and savor the food, the experience, the moment?”

“It seems difficult to truly savor the moment with one eye toward one’s impending death. The idea is to dwell in the present without thought of past or future. The thought of looming death can only impel one to rush.”

“Well, we don’t have to think about looming death, but we _do_ only have an hour.

 _“But at my back I always hear_ _  
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;  
And yonder all before us lie  
Deserts of vast eternity…”_

With those words Julian pressed forward as if fleeing the ‘chariot’ at his back, fitting the whole length of his body against Garak’s, slotting one slender leg between his. Against his hip, the Human’s (apparently quite inconvenient) external sex organ made his state of arousal unmistakable, while Garak was feeling an increasingly uncomfortable tightness where his own remained (much more tastefully) sheathed.

Garak sighed. “I don’t want to make a mess of my clothing.”

“Well, then, we’ll just have to get all of it out of the way, won’t we? Don’t worry, I brought a lot of napkins,” Julian said playfully, glancing back down at the bag at his feet.

He spread out the blanket and they both removed all their clothes, with more efficiency than ceremony, and placed them at one corner of the blanket (carefully folded, at Garak’s insistence). Garak allowed himself to be eased onto his back while Julian, above him, coaxed him with gentle fingers to evert and then guided himself into the slit between his legs with a sigh of overwhelmed relief.

“Elim,” Julian breathed against Garak’s aural ridge, and something tightened in his chest. So few people knew or used his given name, and no one else had spoken it like this—with such tender feeling, such earnest _sentiment_ —since Palandine.

“God, you feel amazing,” Julian groaned, and Garak pounced on the opportunity to defray the sentimentality.

“How strange that you Humans still swear by a deity that you no longer believe in.”

“And _you’re_ still making cultural observations during sex…”

“I’m a Cardassian, Doctor. Nothing is more erotic to us than conversation.”

“Fuck, why is it so hot when you call me ‘Doctor’?”

“I can only speculate. Perhaps it is the aura of power and competence that attends your professional identity…”

“No, no, it’s only— _ah_ —only when _you_ call me that.”

“Then perhaps you are also attuned to the eroticism of our lunchtime conversations… or”—a hiss of pleasure escaped as Julian thrust deeper and bit down, too lightly, on his shoulder ridge—“perhaps it is the sense of secrecy and danger associated with how I address you in public.”

“God, yes, that must be it. I want to kiss every smug little smirk off your face. That condescending way you say ‘my _dear_ Doctor’… fuck, I could have you on your back across the Replimat table.”

“This filth is _not_ the kind of erotic conversation we Cardassians typically engage in during such activities,” Garak reminded him reprovingly—but Julian’s very Human habit of ‘dirty talk’ still sent another surge of warmth through the ridges on his shoulders and chest, and made the fire building low in his belly flare up sharp and hot.

“No, you’d still be discussing literature and philosophy, wouldn’t you?”

“But of course. That _is_ what I’m here for.”

“So sorry to disappoint you! Here, we’ll compromise with some filthy literature,” he said, then began reciting from one of the more salacious poems of John Donne:

 _“License my roving hands, and let them go  
_ _Before, behind, between, above, below.”_

“I’m afraid our current position _doesn’t_ license that,” Garak remarked, his voice embarrassingly strangled and breathy; Julian’s hands were occupied with supporting his weight. Garak slid backward a few centimeters to dislodge Julian, who started to protest; but then Garak took full advantage of the Human’s slight weight and his own superior strength (which he proudly maintained, despite some regrettable softness about the middle) to reverse their positions. He hungrily watched Julian’s mouth, open in a silent gasp, then his blunt teeth biting into his lower lip—voluptuously red and swollen with kissing and exertion—as Garak sank down onto him.

“After all,” Garak continued, trying to keep his voice steady and casual despite the sparks of pleasure tingling up his spine from where their bodies were joined, “the point of these excursions is for _me_ to get exercise.” And his abdominal muscles could certainly use it, he thought ruefully, comparing the young Human’s lean frame and concave stomach to his own middle-aged excess as he let his hands rove over the golden slopes of his lover’s body, with dark hair sprinkled over its plains and nestled in its valleys like the dark stands of trees on the hills around them. And now Julian’s hands were free to rove over his in turn, which they did with an unwarranted tender reverence as he continued reciting, playful and breathless:

 _“O my America! my new-found-land,  
_ _My kingdom, safeliest when with one man manned,  
_ _My mine of precious stones, my empery,  
_ _How blest am I in this discovering thee!”_

Julian’s fingers traced lines of gentle pressure along the ridges of scales that lined Garak’s ribs, up his sensitive ventral seam to the teardrop-shaped _chula_ between his clavicles, which, when flushed the lurid blue it was now, the inexplicably enamored Human had previously compared to various Terran gems. His soft, elegant hands flitted up to frame Garak’s face, fingertips skating over the pronounced scales of the ridge around his eye, which Julian’s fanciful imagination had likened to a string of pearls. _A ‘mine of precious stones,’ indeed! A minefield, more like, and blessed you are in the discovery if you don’t get caught in the explosion._

Garak took hold of Julian’s wrists with only the suggestion of force and pressed them down to the blanket beneath them, bending down to generate some much-needed friction between their bellies and to murmur beside Julian’s ear, “How extravagantly you flatter me, my dear!”

“You know you like it, you beautiful, vain thing,” Julian murmured throatily in return. He took advantage of Garak’s closeness to run his tongue teasingly along his pearled eye-ridge, then to nip at the one that ran down his jaw from his ear, and at last came back to the one that joined neck and shoulder, biting down with the full strength that Garak usually urged him to—but now he hissed and panted, “Unless you have a dermal regenerator with you, Doctor…”

“Sorry,” he said quickly, and instead licked and sucked on the darkened scales while his hips ground out their last few arhythmic thrusts. Garak was loath to pull away from the intoxicatingly warm Human mouth, but he loved nothing more than to watch that open, guileless face go more open and guileless still in the helpless, thoughtless bliss of completion.

“Oh,” Julian sighed out after the last shudders made their way through him. Garak carefully lifted himself away, the fluids of both of their bodies making a terribly undignified squelching sound as they parted, and lowered himself onto his side beside his Human paramour. Julian smiled dopily at him, green-gold eyes warm and soft, damp hair tossed askew, golden skin shining with the clear salty fluid that mammalian species called _sweat_. Garak breathed in its rich, musky smell, feeling like he could get drunk on it.

Julian reached down to take hold of the ‘upright flesh’ (in the poet’s less-than-subtle expression) that rested against Garak’s abdomen, and it made Garak self-conscious that he could feel the give of the skin of his stomach against the backs of his fingers—however much he claimed to find that softness as enticing as everything about his older lover—and the neat rows of self-inflicted scars that he knew could awake nothing but pity in the tender heart of a Federaji doctor.

 _“To enter in these bonds is to be free,”_ Julian whispered—and here Garak had thought he was finished making himself more desirable than anyone had any right to be.

 _“Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.  
_ _Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,  
_ _As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be,  
_ _To taste whole joys.”_

He leaned in for a kiss, and Garak tried very hard not to bite his lip hard enough to draw blood when release hit him, a lightning bolt forking through his whole body from the place where Julian’s burning hand touched him.

“Reciting poetry to me while we make love!” he exclaimed when he had recovered his breath and some measure of composure. “You really are every Cardassian xenophile’s ‘wet dream.’” (There was a phrase in Kardasi very nearly analogous to the one in informal Federation Standard, though the precise bodily fluids to which it adverted were different.)

Julian scrunched up his face in a truly adorable expression of distaste. “Must you use that phrase?”

“What, ‘wet dream’?”

“No, ‘make love.’ It’s so… sappy.”

“Would you prefer I said ‘reciting poetry while we fuck’?”

“Honestly? Yes.”

Garak chuckled. “We should get cleaned up and eat, before my hour of reprieve is up.”

“We still have twenty-five minutes,” Julian informed him.

“Indeed? Do you have an internal chronometer, like your android friend Data?”

“Not exactly… but I have developed a fairly good internal sense of time. It’s important, as a doctor, when time is often of the essence and one can’t always be glancing at chronometers.”

Something in the tone of his voice and the direction of his gaze, alternating between avoiding Garak’s eyes and then meeting them too squarely, told him that this was an evasion of some kind. Curious.

“I would still appreciate it if you checked on one of your many electronic devices.”

Julian rolled his eyes and reached for a small PADD that he had left beside their stack of folded clothing. He pressed a button to turn on the screen and held it out to Garak. 1236, it said.

“A remarkable talent, my dear.”

Julian made a noncommittal noise, then sat up to go digging in the picnic bag he had brought. He drew out a few slender wrapped packets. “Here: napkins,” he said. Garak tore one open and found a folded rectangle of moistened paper-textile. He needed three of them to wipe up the various sticky substances smeared over his chest, stomach, and thighs and leaking from his still-tender _ajan_.

One they had removed the evidence of their activities to their satisfaction, they dressed again and, avoiding the part of the picnic blanket that was still damp from one of the moistened paper cloths (Julian would certainly have to send it through a laundry cycle), sat down to eat. Julian had brought a box of what he called _sushi:_ raw fish and crunchy vegetables wrapped in tangy-sweet seasoned rice, served with a bracingly spicy green paste called _wasabi_. Garak had liked it the first time Julian introduced him to it, at one of their Replimat lunches, oh, it must have been two years ago now. To go with it he had brought a thermos of an earthy, acidic green tea and two small metal cups to serve it in. For a few minutes they ate in contented silence, admiring the magnificent natural beauty all around them—and for Garak, that included the young man beside him, even when he was gracelessly stuffing the little rolls in his mouth with his usual alarming speed.

Finally Julian cleared his throat with an anxious expression that told Garak he wanted to say something important. He could feel his heart leap into his throat with his own anxiety, though he masked it behind his usual placid smile.

“About—about why you’re here. In jail, I mean. What you did.”

Garak had been waiting for Julian to say something about it since he had first turned up, unexpectedly, for lunch with him the week before. His first impulse was to profess his profound remorse as he had with Odo, but somehow it didn’t feel right to lie to him so baldly—not now. “I know it must seem monstrous to you,” he said instead, quiet and solemn. “I cannot expect you to understand, or ask you to forgive me.”

“I don’t,” Julian said, and his face was too old, too serious. Was it only a year ago he was fretting about turning thirty? “Forgive you, I mean. And yes, it does seem monstrous; it _is_ monstrous. But I think I understand.” He paused, looking down at his interlaced fingers, and Garak’s heartbeat in his ears was louder than the din of the ore-processing machines on Terok Nor.

Julian looked back up at him, and clear, earnest, startlingly wise eyes met his, like oasis pools in the Cardassian desert. “I don’t pretend to know who you really are, Garak— Elim,” he corrected, a little crease appearing between his furry eye-ridges. “I don’t know a tenth of what you did for the Obsidian Order; I don’t even know how much of what I _think_ I know is true. But from what I do know—what you’ve told me, or hinted at; what I’ve _seen_ you do—I have an idea of the kind of man you are. I know why you did what you did—or tried to do. I can’t forgive it, because it’s unforgivable. But it doesn’t matter. I never loved you because I thought you were a _good_ man.”

Garak almost stopped breathing. Julian had never said he loved him at all—neither of them had said anything of the sort—but now that he was saying it, it felt like the beginning of their parting rather than coming closer together.

Julian didn’t wait for him to reply before he pressed on, much as though this was a speech he had rehearsed. “You lie as easily as you smile, Garak, and do both as easily as you breathe, but I think you really believe at least some of what you’ve said about duty and sacrifice for the State; you can’t tell the _same_ lie every week for four years, not with that kind of heartfelt conviction and indignation at my objections. I believe you really would do anything for Cardassia—including destroying a whole intelligent alien species. Committing _genocide_ , as we call it in the Federation—though I doubt that word carries the same weight for you as it does for us.”

Garak had heard the word, usually applied to the deaths of millions of Bajorans during the Occupation, but that use seemed at odds with the literal meaning he found in the Kardasi–Standard dictionary (which he resorted to when the Universal Translator failed to find a reasonably concise equivalent): the effort to entirely erase a group of people from existence. That had never been the goal of the Occupation; the Bajorans were useful enough as workers, even if the Cardassian Union considered their lives interchangeable and expendable. Tain’s attempt to destroy the Founders’ first homeworld, and his own attempt to destroy the second: those were more accurate applications of the moralistic Federaji term.

“So what you did horrifies me, and saddens me,” Bashir continued, “but it doesn’t surprise me. After all, when you joined Tain on his mission to do the same thing, you didn’t do it for the purpose of stopping him, did you? You joined him because you wanted to serve the State, to regain his favor and go home. And you would have gone down on that ship with him if Odo hadn’t punched you out to save your life. You would sacrifice _anything_ for Cardassia: from the lives of an entire species, to _my_ life, to your own life.”

“If it comforts you at all,” Garak said with a lightness of tone that belied the heaviness settling in his stomach, “I did not believe that I would live long enough to feel your loss.”

“Maybe it does a little,” said Bashir—Julian?—“but killing _me_ wasn’t really the important thing, was it? You were willing to kill _all_ the senior station officers to save your own life… and mine, yes, I know; and I was willing to kill you to stop you. I wouldn’t have hesitated to kill you if I thought that was the only way to stop you from committing genocide. Fortunately, I didn’t have to make that decision—and neither did Worf; and here we both are, alive, and so are the Changelings.”

Garak nodded his acceptance. “And why are you _here_ —with me, now?” _Why did you just make love to me with that tender reverence in your eyes, your words, your touch? Was it, after all, a long goodbye?_

“I told you: I’ve never loved you because I thought you were _good._ I love you because you’re the most fascinating person I’ve ever met, the only person whose passion for ideas even comes close to matching mine… the only person for whom I’ve never had to hide my intelligence, to ‘tone it down’ for fear of being… _too much_. Too annoying, too talkative, too passionate, too arrogant.”

Garak nodded again. “All of that is why I… love… you.” The word did not roll easily off his tongue when he was speaking of another person, not the way he _‘loved’_ the works of Preloc or the luxurious feel of Tholian silk or Delavian chocolates a little too much. _But I also love you because you **are** good, in a way I am not and can never be._

“But I also know you’d leave me in a heartbeat if you thought you had the slightest chance of being able to go home. That’s what you did when you got on that runabout to go find Tain: you _hoped_ you’d never come back, never see me again.”

“I did hope that perhaps our paths might cross again.” Garak’s quiet voice cracked; his mouth and throat were terribly dry. He took a sip of his tea and cleared his throat.

“Maybe. All the same, this was only ever going to be temporary for you—a diversion, something to relieve the tedium of exile until you were finally called home. Knowing that stings, sometimes… but it’s allowed me to make peace with the fact that our values are wildly incompatible. I couldn’t spend my whole life with someone who didn’t share my most basic moral commitments. But that was never what this was supposed to be, was it? I went into it with my eyes open, knowing who you were, what you could and couldn’t give me. None of that has changed; nothing _has_ to change.”

Yes, it _was_ supposed to be a temporary diversion until he could go home… but now he never would. Tain was dead—the only one who knew the reason for Garak’s exile, and the only one who could revoke it. Now this was temporary because _Julian_ would leave: he would be reassigned to a more prestigious post, better suited to his extraordinary talents. Or maybe he would simply grow bored when he had unraveled the web of mystery in which the elusive Cardassian spy was clothed, leaving, at last, nothing but an aging tailor with hands that would never be clean of blood. And when the fascination was gone, the inevitable revulsion would set in.

Julian blew out a heavy breath, as if with relief. “There; that’s what I had to say.”

“My _dear_ Doctor,” Garak said warmly, as if his lover hadn’t just twisted a knife into his gut. He knew his serene, smiling mask was firmly affixed; he had been wearing it so long that it still fit easily even when everything around and inside him was crumbling. “I believe there may be—”

“—hope for me yet, yes, I know,” said Bashir, rolling his eyes with a crooked smile.

“I will say, I am unspeakably glad that I will continue to enjoy your company.” He was, wasn’t he? It would have been worse if Julian had told him that he couldn’t stand the sight of him anymore, that he couldn’t bear to touch or be touched by such a monster as he. Perhaps he would eventually; but Garak had been granted at least a temporary reprieve.

“And I’ll continue to enjoy yours.” Julian grinned mischievously and added:

_“Now let us sport us while we may,  
And now, like amorous birds of prey,  
Rather at once our time devour  
Than languish in his slow-chapped power…  
Thus, though we cannot make our sun  
Stand still, yet we will make him run.”_

“The rest of the ‘carpe diem’ poem?” Garak guessed.

“Slightly abridged, yes.”

There was an all-too-familiar electronic beep indicating that their time had run out. They gathered up the empty boxes of food, the used napkins, the stained picnic blanket, and packed it all back into Julian’s shoulder bag. They took a last admiring look around at the golden hills framed by shining water, and Garak had a haunting feeling as of taking a last look at the world before his execution. “Computer, end program,” said Julian, and it all dissolved into an empty metal room, the walls lined with light-projectors.

Garak might have felt smug or triumphant at the knowing smirk that Quark gave them as they descended the stairs, but now he just felt hollow. A bored-looking Starfleet Security officer, a Bolian, waved him back into his holding cell and raised the force field behind him. Julian was still standing just two meters away, but Garak could no longer smell his musky mammalian sweat, except the traces that lingered on his own skin.

“I’ll see you for lunch again next week,” the Doctor said with a cheerful smile. “I can send something else for you to read—unless you’d like to suggest any Cardassian literature that I can try to find.”

“Do send more Terran literature—most Cardassian works are unlikely to be publicly available in the Federation… and besides, I have quite a bit more free time for reading than you do.”

“True,” Julian acknowledged with a grin. “Maybe I’ll see if you like the Jacobean playwrights any better than Shakespeare…”

“They can hardly be much worse,” Garak said, just to needle him, though his heart wasn’t in it.

Julian just shook his head and didn’t take the bait. “ _À bientôt_ , Garak.”

He wasn’t sure what that meant (his Translator was still off), but he suspected it was just a formulaic farewell. “Until next week, dear Doctor.”

When Julian had left, Garak turned to the Starfleet guard and said, still with his artificial smile, “I’m quite worn out—I’m going to take a nap. Please don’t wake me unless the station is on fire.”

The Bolian just rolled his eyes. “I’ll wake you for dinner,” he said.

“Very well.” Garak removed his shoes, then lay down on his little cot facing the blank gray wall. Ordinarily he would never sleep fully dressed and risk creasing his immaculate clothing, but at the moment he found himself unable to care. He wished for nothing more than a bottle of cheap kanar—the kind that tasted of vinegar beneath the sweetness, and made him feel with all his senses the full extent of his wretchedness.

He had always known he didn’t deserve Julian, but knowing that Julian knew it too hurt far more than he could have predicted. He hadn’t realized until now that he _wanted_ to be good enough for him, to _try_ to deserve him. But he knew now that Julian wasn’t expecting him to, and didn’t think he ever could. He couldn’t even disappoint him if he expected nothing; all he could do was either interest him or bore him, and he would inevitably grow to bore him eventually.

 _“Pathetic,”_ Tain’s voice sneered in his head. _“What did you think—that you would **redeem** yourself for him? You are what you are, Elim, because you are what I made you. You can’t change what you are.”_

 _I didn’t want to interrogate Odo,_ Garak pointed out to the voice. _I suffered when he suffered._

The Tain in his head made a dismissive hissing sound. _“Becoming weak isn’t the same as becoming good. All you’ve become is a coward with the will to do what’s terrible and necessary, but without the stomach to carry it out. Is that why you ‘missed’ that one security camera—because you **wanted** Worf to find you?”_

No, that was giving himself too much credit. His failure was due to simple carelessness, not the hidden workings of conscience.

_“Well, then. You’ll always be too wicked to deserve him, and it’s only a matter of time before you’re too weak and incompetent to interest him.”_

He felt that time already breathing down his neck— _“Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near”_ —and on the other side, _“deserts of vast eternity,”_ as blank and gray as the wall in front of him. Not enough time, then nothing _but_ time, an endless empty expanse of it.

**Author's Note:**

> Like everybody else, I got the terms for Cardassian body parts from tinsnip's [Speculative Cardassian Reproductive Biology](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1719479).
> 
> I've seen the idea that Garak deliberately injured himself to activate the implant before he configured a device to turn it on remotely floating around in various places, but I think I first encountered it in pyrrhic_victory's [Dangerous Sentiments](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1576258) series, and I've been primarily inspired by that take on it.
> 
> While I was working on this fic, I read eusuchia's gorgeous, heartbreaking fic [Thermotaxia](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14384289/chapters/33214188) and saw their [post](https://kaprosuchus.tumblr.com/post/173078434029) (as kaprosuchus on Tumblr) wondering, "where are all the garashir fics set during the six months garak is in station jail for attempted genocide?" The take on Julian's reaction in their fic is very different from mine, and completely convincing; I hope the one I present here is somewhat plausible, though differently depressing.
> 
> The John Donne poem that Bashir quotes is "To His Mistress Going to Bed." The location in the holosuite program is on California Route 35, also known as "Skyline Boulevard," just south of its intersection with CA-92 (I went to university in the Bay Area).


End file.
